Front entrance 2.0

Stay with me people! All will be revealed in time.... I would show you the final final reveal except Joann Fabrics did not have enough trim to finish the job and I am going to visit my sister and her five sweet bebe's this weekend so I will have to what until Monday night after work to hopefully finish it up and then I can do the "photo shoot" on Tuesday. Whew! The was one long run-on sentence. Oh what the heck, I'll show you the bulk of the transformation because how much can trim really matter?

So here it is!

Love, Love, LOOOOOOOOVE my orange door!  Yes, I did say I painted my door orange. My garage entrance door is a deeper shade of orange. AND two walls of my foyer are another shade of orange. If you can't guess by now, orange is my favorite color and it makes me happy. Life is too short NOT to live with color. My husband is just happy that I used some subtler shades on the walls. I love him too.

The creamy woodwork makes it look so bright now. I have no idea why it took me 7 years to fix this eyesore. 

Here is my floor again. The colors just pop now. Below are some close ups because I am always amazed at the workmanship that goes into old houses.

Great herringbone pattern.

These are individual triangles people!

So now the orange makes sense, right! 

So here is my fix for the badly worn, won't come off the walls tile. Could you figure out what I used on the walls?  I upholstered over the tile with a drop cloth! Yes, I did. Don't worry, I'll show you how just as soon as I get back from my sisters. 

I painted the original trim the polished pearl color. Which by the way on the previous post about my front entrance, looks a little pink in the color chip! Yuck. It is really a pretty creamy white. I thought the bright whites looked too shocking against the orange. I know the orange door is shocking enough to most people, I didn't want my visitors going into an apoplectic seizure. 

So I have to add trim to cover the staples but I wanted to show you the walls so you could appreciate how good a drop cloth can look. You can see how drop clothes are used for slipcovers, curtains, tablecloths, etc. all over the web. $10 covered both walls so if that doesn't inspire you to check them out as a fabric resource I don't know what will!

Pure Love

What do you think??? Am I crazy or just plain brilliant?

Have a great weekend and I'll talk with you next week.

Always being renewed,

Front entrance progress

So I thought I'd show you how the front entrance is moving along. I had today off so I was determined to get the painting done at least. Success! Painting completed juuuuust about 10 minutes go. Yes it did take me all day just to paint three doors, 30 feet of trim and the walls and ceiling of a 2x4 room. I am the tortoise, not the hare.

I forgot to take pictures of the hideous green that is on my interior door.  You have to go through two sets of doors to get into my house. Luckily, my exterior door has that same hideous green. Yeah me! And I didn't get a good shot of the other side of the exterior doors so here they both are in all their "before" glory". Seriously, I think they said "well, it's about friggin' time!" or it could just be my little voice in  my head that says that to me a lot.

                                             When it is warmer I am painting those bad boys black!




Here is a peek at the palette.   All paint was from Behr and I used the Ultra Premium primer and paint mix.

Polished Pearl

Silver moon

Flaming Torch

Here are the sneak peeks , but just a little peek =0)

This is going somewhere. Can you guess what it is?

This picture convinced me to keep the original tile. My floor colors never popped so much until I painted the wood. Am falling in love again.

Tile still there but I love the Silver Moon color on the upper walls.

Can't wait to show you the next and final step in this process. I think it might be my first Big Reveal! Won't the homeowner be surprised!!

Love you for stopping by to visit. Please come again and stay a little longer if you can!

Always being renewed,

Front Entrance

So I have taken a break from the furniture mash-up because I am really stuck on how to finish the back of the bookcase and my husband and firstborn went to DC for a boys weekend to visit my brother-in-law.  So I found myself with a free weekend so to speak. I did have my girls so we decided to have a girls weekend. It involved drywall, paint scrapers and a palm sander. Pure Heaven, at least for me, probably not for a 3 and 8 year old. I did manage to have some fun girly time with them which I will always treasure in my heart.

As I said,  I am stuck on Big Blue, as I have affectionately begun to call the shelving unit for my son, I decided to tackle the front entrance of our home this weekend. I figured a 2x4 space could easily be scraped, painted and made fabulous in 48 hours and I would surprise the hubs with it as he has been wanting to do this for a while now.

So wrong on so many levels.

 Behold the befores.....

I actually loved this wall "tile" (looks like what linoleum might have originally looked like or at least its prototype)  and was going to copper foil it but the other corner is so cracked it was horrible.

Love this floor tile but not sure I should keep it since it is all cracked. I have a hard time parting with things that are indigenous to the house and this is all original tile. I think I'll try to find a way to clean it well first and see how it goes before undertaking that beast.

Here is the first problem......

The tile will not come off of the walls!!! The first wall I tried peeled right off and that is where I got excited and well, cocky. Never get cocky until you are all done, all of the walls. Then you can strut like a peacock but until then....just scrape your little heart out and be silently all aflutter at how well it is going.

The second problem.....It all began when I decided to strip the door frame to make it match the rest of the wood in the front entrance. They painted the door green and just the door frame wood green and left the rest a beautiful deep dark wood color. So I wanted it to match.

Green gone, now white

White gone, now yellow

Yellow not going anywhere, apparently applied with some form of vintage super glue that no solvent can dissolve. 

It is probably lead filled and thus I will need a a ventilator and a blow torch to remove it, well, heat gun  seein' as there is wood involved. Or I could just paint it white! Sounds a whole lot easier to me then more scraping. On the plus side, my biceps and triceps are looking tight!  

Stripping wood is so labor intensive, however,  I love it as it tells the homes life story. You can imagine how the layers speak to the layers of the family that lived there and how changing paint color may have coincided with a hang in the family. Much like how a weekend trip changed the look yet again of this lovely brick lady.

I do have a solution in my head to remedy the wall situation and if all goes well, I'll show you. Otherwise, this never happened.


Always being renewed,